Kabbalistic name analysis: how it is calculated

Name analysis converts the letters of a name into numbers and interprets the result. The calculation itself takes a few lines to explain; what it assumes is the more interesting part.

Where it comes from

Hebrew has no numerals of its own — numbers are written with letters. Every word therefore inevitably carries a numerical value as well, and gematria uses this to relate words of equal value to one another.

That is a practice of interpretation inside a written tradition, applied to a fixed text, in a language whose letters really do carry those values.

Modern name analysis transfers the idea to the Latin alphabet, giving A to I the numbers 1 to 9, J to R again 1 to 9, and S to Z the same. That assignment was laid down in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It shares the idea with Hebrew gematria, but not the foundation.

The arithmetic

Each letter of the name is translated into its number.
All the numbers are added together.
The total is reduced by adding its digits until a number from 1 to 9 is left. The master numbers 11, 22 and 33 are not reduced any further in most systems.
Apart from that, the soul number is often worked out from the vowels alone and the expression number from the consonants alone.

The decision that comes first

Which name counts? That question has to be answered, and the answer justified, before any adding is done, because each answer gives a different result:

birth name or present name;
with or without middle names;
umlauts written as ä or as ae — a difference of several points;
a name in another script: the transliteration decides the result.

Anyone who settles the rule only after calculating several variants will always find one that fits. That is the decisive difference between a procedure and a search.

How this relates to astrology

The two are often offered together and stand far apart in method. A chart rests on an astronomical position that exists regardless of what anyone is called or how a date is written. A name number rests on a spelling. This is no value judgement — but it is a difference worth knowing.